Show and Tell: One of the Worst Chapters in Palestinian School Books. - by Itamar Marcus

So if it weren’t scary enough for the children to be told they have to go out and kill, PA educators teach them that “heroes” are willing to fearlessly die as martyrs.

Itamar Marcus..
Opinion/JPost..
24 October '18..
Link: https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/One-of-the-worst-chapters-in-Palestinian-schoolbooks-570228

If you want to know why Palestinian children believe that killing Israelis is model behavior, all you have to do is look at a chapter in one of their schoolbooks.

PA schoolbooks have been criticized ever since Palestinian Media Watch wrote the first report on them in 1998, and the newest books in some respects are the worst ever. However, one chapter stands out in its overt promotion of terrorism. This chapter, appearing in the fifth-grade Arabic Language book published in 2017, serves as a window to understanding the PA leadership’s profoundly twisted values.

The chapter starts innocently by stressing the importance of heroes to national identity and national pride: “Heroes have an important position in every nation… the people – even if they are divided over many things – they all agree regarding the pride in their heroes…”

The schoolbook continues and teaches students that feeling pride is not enough. Society takes numerous active steps to honor its heroes: “[We] sing their praise, learn the history of their lives, name our children after them, and name streets, squares, and prominent cultural sites after them…”

In short, society assures that heroes are never forgotten. They might have lived in earlier times, but by naming streets and squares after them and singing their praise, these heroes remain in Palestinian consciousness.

The next message is most important: The children are taught that these heroes are not merely memories of the past they are the role models for the future: “Every one of us wishes to be like them.”

Until now this messaging is not problematic, however, all that changes when the schoolbook presents the 10 people who PA educators promote as the role models Palestinian children should emulate. The list of Palestinian heroes includes no scientists, no doctors, no engineers, no singers, no athletes, nor any artists. There have been three Muslim Nobel Prize laureates in science and two in literature, but they are not on the list of Palestinian heroes.

Who are the Palestinian heroes then according to the PA schoolbook? They are 10 Muslim combatants from the first century of Islam through the 21st century. And possibly the worst name on this list of role models is terrorist mass-murderer Dalal Mughrabi.

Shutting Down UNRWA’s Message of Hate and Indoctrination - by Deborah Singer Soffen/Joan Lurie Goldberg

...The indoctrination of impressionable children in a racist, violent ideology that encourages martyrdom puts a child’s personal well-being in jeopardy.

Deborah Singer Soffen/Joan Lurie Goldberg..
Algemeiner.com..
26 September '18..

The education of Palestinian schoolchildren must change drastically if there is ever to be a lasting negotiated peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. Why? Because these schools have been inciting three generations of young Palestinians to hate and kill Jews, and the only means of conflict resolution that these students have been exposed to is violence.

For children all over the world, the new school year is filled with promise and excitement, affording them the opportunity for personal development so that they may eventually become productive citizens of their perspective communities. The same cannot be said for Palestinian children. The United Nations’ Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA and the Palestinian leadership have manipulated their education system to serve a different purpose. Rather than an education that strives to better the child, they exploit impressionable minds, indoctrinating these children into a culture of hate, thereby perpetuating the conflict rather than resolving it. Until their education system changes, the region is at least a generation away from a true, sustainable peace.

Palestinian schools, including various private schools belonging to Christian churches and Islamic charity foundations, all receive their textbooks from the PA Ministry of Education’s Curricula Center in Ramallah.

According to Dr. Arnon Groiss, whose research on the subject spans 18 years, the most recent set of books published in 2016/2018 are even more radical than their predecessors. According to him, a curriculum of hatred permeates all subject matter, from elementary arithmetic to high school social studies and science. Martyrdom is glorified, the Jews’ historical connection to their biblical homeland is rejected, and contemporary maps of the region omit the existence of the UN member state of Israel. Jews are demonized and terrorist/jihad concepts are woven into songs, plays, and academia.

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This article is dedicated to the memory of Ari Fuld, an American-Israeli father of four who was brutally murdered by a Palestinian youth indoctrinated in a school using books provided by the PA Ministry of Education’s Curricula Center.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Who are the enablers of Palestinian child terrorists? - by Stephen M. Flatow

Who is to blame for encouraging and inspiring young people to engage in murderous behavior?

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
01 August '18..

Last Thursday, a Palestinian teenager stabbed a young Jewish father to death and wounded two others. On Sunday, a Palestinian teenager who assaulted Israeli soldiers was released from prison to international acclaim. Later on Sunday, two Palestinian teenagers with machine guns and bullet magazines were intercepted on their way to massacre Jews.

Palestinian children are not born hating Jews or loving violence. Who is to blame for encouraging and inspiring these young people to engage in such murderous behavior?

We can, of course, dismiss the tired cliché about how “the occupation” is what causes young Palestinians to turn violent. Israel stopped occupying 98 percent of the Palestinians back in 1995. Thursday’s stabber and Sunday’s machine-gunners have spent their entire lives under the rule of the Palestinian Authority, not Israel. They had to leave their P.A.-ruled home towns and go in search of Jews elsewhere precisely because the last Israeli soldier left their hometowns way back in 1995.

So if it’s not the “occupation,” then what is it?

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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United Kingdom: Funding Textbooks That Teach Children to Blow Themselves Up - by Douglas Murray

This is the true scandal for Britain: that while the UK government fails to pump the resources needed into helping young British children to grow up literate and numerate in Britain, it pumps millions of pounds into the Palestinian Authority to make sure that young Palestinian children think that a career of violence is a career worth pursuing. While failing to help British children grow up, the UK government helps Palestinian children to blow themselves up. It is a horrible legacy for any country, but for Britain, a shameful one.

Douglas Murray..
Gatestone Institute..
04 April '18..

In 2016, a study carried out by the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) found that for literacy in the developed world, England ranks dead last. The same study also stated that for numeracy in the developed world, England ranks second-to-last. Even among graduates from English universities, the OECD study found, one in ten had literacy or numeracy skills that were classified as "low".

These results are astonishing, not to mention shaming. They reflect decades of misdirection in British education, including the misdirection of resources. Understandably, successive governments complain about a lack of resources. But all of those laments only serve to highlight the strangeness of Britain's latest priorities in funding education.

This past weekend it emerged that last year the British government funnelled £20 million to Palestinian schools. A review by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) found that these revenues go towards funding a curriculum which omits teaching peace, promotes the use of violence -- specifically jihad -- and encourages martyrdom. An analysis of the textbooks used in Palestinian schools funded by the UK government -- using UK taxpayers' money -- found that these textbooks, which come from the Palestinian Authority (PA), "exerts pressure over young Palestinians to acts of violence."

A science textbook intended for 12-year-olds, for example, teaches them Newton's second law of physics in the following way:

"During the first Palestinian uprising, Palestinian youths used slingshots to confront the soldiers of the Zionist Occupation and defend themselves from their treacherous bullets. What is the relationship between the elongation of the slingshot's rubber and the tensile strength affecting it?"

Another textbook, which is meant to be used for teaching arithmetic to 9-year-olds takes a highly local approach to the matter. Math lessons as provided by the PA -- courtesy of the UK government -- teach Palestinian children addition by asking them to calculate the number of "martyrs" in various Palestinian uprisings.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Palestinians and the "Ugly Crime" of a School Curriculum - by Bassam Tawil

...The Palestinian minister of education can continue to talk about resisting the Israeli curriculum, but the good news is that the Arabs residents of Jerusalem and the Arab citizens of Israel will continue to knock on the doors of Israeli educational institutions to seek a good education.

Bassam Tawil..
Gatestone Institute..
01 March '18..

The Palestinian Authority (PA) Minister of Education, Sabri Saidam, is worried these days. He is not worried, he says, because Palestinian schoolchildren are being taught to hate Israel. He is not worried because Palestinian schoolchildren are being goaded by their leaders to carry out terror attacks against Jews, from stone-throwing to stabbings to ramming cars.

The PA minister of Education is worried, he says, about a "crime" that is about to be committed against Arab children in Jerusalem schools. The "crime," in his view, is that the children will be taught according to an Israeli, and not a Palestinian, curriculum.

Saidam sees the decision to apply the Israeli curriculum to Arab schools in Jerusalem as an "ugly crime of counterfeit." These are the exact words he used to denounce the decision to introduce the Israeli curriculum into Arab schools.

Why are the minister and the Palestinian Authority so truculently opposed to Arab schoolchildren studying according to the Israeli curriculum? Is this curriculum really an "ugly crime of counterfeit," as the minister says?

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Want To End Violence? Scrap PA Curriculum by Evelyn Gordon

...opportune or not, Israel must replace the east Jerusalem curriculum if it wants to avoid future rounds of violence like the current one. It’s too late to do anything about the current generation of East Jerusalem Arabs; they’ve already been thoroughly indoctrinated to the view that Israel is evil incarnate. But it’s not too late to prevent the PA from brainwashing another generation of children.

Evelyn Gordon..
Analysis from Israel..
24 November '15..

In confronting the current onslaught of lone-wolf attacks, the tactics Israel has used successfully against terrorist organizations have so far proven ineffective. That begs the question of what it should be doing instead. I have no solutions for the short run, but there’s one obvious step Israel must take if it wishes to prevent attacks like these over the long run. That step emerges from two of the most salient features of the current violence: Permanent residents of Israel have committed a huge proportion of the attacks, but citizens of Israel have committed very few.

The permanent residents in question are mainly east Jerusalem Arabs, and they have committed more than eight times as many attacks as Arab citizens have, even though Arab citizens outnumber permanent residents by more than 4:1. This enormous gap certainly can’t be explained by the popular fallacy that terror is motivated mainly by economic concerns; as permanent residents, east Jerusalem Arabs enjoy the same access to jobs, the same freedom of movement throughout Israel and the same health and welfare benefits that citizens do. Granted, Arab citizens are generally better off, but the difference isn’t dramatic enough to explain the dramatic gap in terrorist activity.

There is, however, one difference quite dramatic enough to explain this gap: Whereas Arab citizens study the Israeli curriculum in school, most of East Jerusalem’s permanent residents study the Palestinian Authority curriculum. And that curriculum, as sweeping reports by both Palestinian Media Watch and IMPACT-SE have detailed, is filled with vile anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incitement.

Inter alia, as PMW’s report notes, this curriculum rejects the legitimacy of Israel’s existence (textbooks refer to “the so-called State of Israel”), justifies violence against it, defines such violence as a religious obligation and informs students that Jews and Zionists are irredeemably evil (one book, for instance, refers to “the robbing Jews”; another tells students that Israel “killed your children, split open your women’s bellies, held your revered elderly men by the beard, and led them to the death pits”). These messages are then reinforced by the “educational” programs broadcast on the PA’s official media, where Jews are described as “monkeys and pigs,” “enemies of Allah” and the “most evil of creations,” among other charming epithets.

East Jerusalem schools have been using the PA curriculum, with Israel’s consent, ever since the PA’s establishment in 1994. In other words, Israel decided two decades ago to let the PA indoctrinate a generation of East Jerusalem schoolchildren to abominate Israel – and now it’s shocked that the graduates of this indoctrination are going out and trying to murder Israelis.

The PA curriculum obviously isn’t the only problem; the PA also contributes to the climate of incitement that drives these attacks in many other ways, including statements by its senior officials, broadcasts by its official media organs and Facebook posts by its political parties. Nor can this incitement be excused as a response to despair over the frozen peace process: This is how the PA chose to “educate” its people even in the heyday of the Oslo process when most of the world believed peace was at hand.

Children and what a soulless society can do to them

...No immediate word on how firmly the ANC stands behind children with daggers or the adults who put them there. Or whether they subscribe, as Hamas does, to the uplifting value of viciously murdering unarmed Jews and other Israelis as part of its efforts to “free Al-Aqsa”.

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
20 October '15..

"There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children."Nelson Mandela 1918-2013, addressing the launch of the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund, Pretoria, South Africa, May 8, 1995 [source]

Hamas, which more closely resembles a death cult than a functioning government, organized a rally this past Friday night in Rafah, Gaza Strip. If a picture is worth a thousand words, these representative photos below, published originally in Arabic-language channels and not (yet) syndicated by the major news agency names, sum up the tragedy of the Palestinian Arabs.

They also highlight the hypocrisy of those who ignore the evidence in front of their faces in the rush to embrace the Islamists and their "struggle" to "resist". So does the utter silence emanating from the many child-protection agencies around the world who published heart-rending images of under-nourished or war-impacted or genitally-mutilated children (as they should) but will not touch the rampant, highly public child abuse that is a daily reality in the world of the jihadists, and in particular the dark netherworld of Hamas.

Bear in mind as you glance at them what's going on in the late Nelson Mandela's homeland the last few days:

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter, 

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Distorting the research and giving incitement the stamp of approval

Ben-Dror Yemini..
Times of Israel..
10 February '13..

It all began as a worthy initiative of the “Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land.” The Council includes Israel’s Chief Rabbinate and Muslim and Christian religious leaders and aims to advance understanding and dialogue between the different religions. It decided to sponsor a research project that would examine the way Israeli and Palestinian Authority school text books portrayed the other, in order to promote changes and improvements as need be. Professor Bruce Wexler from the United States took up the challenge and obtained half a million dollars from the US State Department to support the study. He brought on board Professor Daniel Bar-Tal from Tel Aviv University and Professor Sami Adwan from the Palestinian side, and the project got underway.

This topic was not new to the researchers. They had dealt with the subject in the past and in fact had already formulated their opinions. The results of the research, one may suspect, were never in doubt. Its conclusions are that both sides’ school books are plagued by bias and a negative portrayal of the other side, even if the bias displayed by the Palestinian books is slightly greater. Most importantly, the “research” absolves the Palestinians of the accusations made against them regarding incitement. Thus another well-worn Zionist myth, which claimed that the Palestinians’ text books educate for hatred, and that Israeli text books are much more reasonable, was, as it were, disproved The Israeli Ministry of Education made clear that it would not cooperate with the research, due to its severe biases and distortions, and rejected the study’s findings from the outset.

Distorting the research

In response to the Education Ministry’s reservations, Bar-Tal rides out to defend his honor. The very idea that someone would think of raising doubts regarding the sacred truth coming out of his school of thought is scandalous. So allow me to raise several question marks regarding the quality of the professor’s research, whose academic work is difficult to separate from his political opinions. For example, in a study which claimed to analyze Israeli public opinion, Bar-Tal examined the public’s perception of the Partition Plan. The majority of Israelis, he notes, know that the Arab side opposed the plan. This view, Bar-Tal opines, reveals that the Israeli collective has adopted a “simplistic approach.” Why? Because “26.6% of Israelis did not know that the Partition Plan offered 1.3 million Palestinians 44% of the territory, and six-hundred thousand Jews 55%.” One has to strain to decipher the connection between this piece of information and the celebrated scholar’s conclusion that this indicates a “distortion of memory” on the part of the Israeli collective.

In reality it is not the memory that is distorted but the research. First of all, on the factual level, the majority of the territory which was designated for the Jewish state consisted of the Negev, much of which was an uninhabited desert. Even the city of Beersheba, as well as the majority of the fertile territory, was designated for the Arab side. Second, the Partition Plan was based on, among other things, the clear understanding that hundreds of thousands of Jews were waiting to enter the Jewish state, whether Holocaust survivors or Jews from Arab lands, who by then were already suffering from increased persecution (for this very reason British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, who insisted that Holocaust refugees be rehabilitated in Europe, opposed the Partition plan.) And finally, even according to Bar-Tal, 74% of the Jewish population was aware of the facts regarding population numbers and territory percentages. Where then is the “distortion”? Rather, what Bar-Tal presents in this research is nothing but a highly-questionable attempt – one that is political, misleading and mistaken – to explain, and in essence to justify, the Arab rejection of the Partition Plan.

Intentionally masking the PA educational system hate and promotion of violence

What did this report hide from the world? That the overall message throughout the PA's school system is the rejection of Israel's right to exist.

Itamar Marcus..
Op-Ed Contributor/JPost..
09 February '13..

It is hard to imagine a more flawed analysis of Palestinian Authority schoolbooks than the recent report of the Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land, led by Sami Adwan of Bethlehem University and Daniel Bar-Tal of Tel Aviv University.

The report’s inaccuracies start with its methodology of systematically citing all quotes from Israeli and Palestinian schoolbooks under the same headings – forcing the appearance of symmetry even when none exists.

Another major flaw is giving as much weight to the fringe, ultra-Orthodox school system in Israel as it does to mainstream state schools. This artificially inflates the number of problematic examples on the Israeli side to support the report’s misleading attempt to demonstrate equivalence.

But the ultimate failing of the report is that it intentionally masks the hate and promotion of violence that are central to the PA educational system. This hatred, together with the hate and terror glorification expressed by the daily actions and messages of the PA leaders and through their controlled institutions, is rapidly condemning the next generations to continued conflict.

What did this report hide from the world? That the overall message that permeates the PA’s teachings about Israel throughout the school system is the total rejection of Israel’s most fundamental right – its right to exist.

Fayyad a “Genuine Reformer”? Hardly.

David Bedein..
Israel Resource Review..
17 July '12..

Last week on July 11, 2012,  during a special session of the Middle East Subcommittee of the US Foreign Affairs Committee of the US House of Representatives, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and Elliott Abrams, a former Deputy National Security Adviser who is now with the Council on Foreign Relations, testified that “PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad was trustworthy... but also hamstrung in part by restrictions imposed by Abbas”.

In correspondence with our agency, Schanzer adjusted his characterization of Fayyad and referred to him as a “genuine reformer”

Indeed, over the last few years, Fayyad has been sold to the world as the great hope for the Palestinian Authority.

The time has come to question such a characterization of Fayyad.  A case in point:

Palestinians' Chances for Peace

Hagai Mazuz
Hudson New York
24 June '10

In every society, people invest in and cultivate the young, hoping that this up-and-coming generation will accomplish what previous generations have failed to do. Europeans, for example, having been wrenched by two brutal wars, have understood that they must do everything possible so that there would be no more wars; the result has been an education system based on finding peaceful solutions, tolerance, and acceptance of the other as he is. We can already see the results of their efforts: the age of great wars between European powers seems to have come to an end; within Europe's borders, there seems to be peace and quiet. "Soft power" reigns.

The Europeans have since been trying to impose their Soft Power solution on the Middle East in general, and on Israel and the Palestinians in particular. The central problem facing the Europeans in carrying out their strategy for making peace between the two sides is that the Europeans are guilty of "mirror imaging:." They see Israel, justifiably so, as a Western country in every sense of the word; and start with the assumption that both the Palestinians and Israel want to get along with one another the way the Europeans now do. This is Europe's problem. Israel educates its young to pursue peace. Some Israelis have made this their utmost goal, even to the point of ignoring -- or even blinding themselves -- to the Middle Eastern reality in which they live. The Palestinians, on the other hand, have done the exact opposite.

Examining the Palestinian Authority's Educational Curriculum -- both in the West Bank and Gaza -- exposes the bitter truth. In the textbook "Our Beautiful Language," which is used in the first grade, there is a picture on page 142 of a teacher telling her students about the Arab world. The Muslim countries are all colored in green (the color of Islam); and that includes the State of Israel. On page 153 of the 12th grade book, "The History of the Arabs and the World in the 20th Century," all of the names of these countries are listed except Israel, which is listed as "Palestine." This occurs again and again in other educational texts; for example on page 143: on the maps used in Palestinian schools, there is a map of Israel on which is superimposed the PLO flag; and on the Internet home page of the Palestinian Central Statistical Office, Israel is listed as Palestine. This same map, incidentally, is also on the wall of Mahmoud Abbas's office.



"The war over Palestine ended more tragically than any war in history. The Zionist gangs stole Palestine and expelled its residents from their cities, villages, and lands and established the State of Israel on this land…" This is not some Hamas propaganda poster; this is a paragraph (page 104) taken from the educational text, "The Arabic language: Discussion, Literature, and Criticism," used in the 12th grade.

Educational texts used in both the Palestinian Authority and in Gaza indoctrinate and encourage children to prefer death over life and call for jihad:

"Oh heroes, Allah has promised you victory… Don't speak to yourselves about fleeing … Your enemies desire life while you desire death."

" Don't worry about encountering the enemy because the taste of death is not bitter in the faces of the believers…" [See "Discussions and Texts for the 8th grade, Part 2, (2002) Page 16]

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